Article by Paula Eder

Time management tips vary in effectiveness, depending on your skill in using them. This is particularly true when setting boundaries. All too often, the line blurs between assertive and aggressive boundaries, leading to painful backlashes. Here’s how to keep on the right side!

What is your personal experience with setting boundaries so far? Take a quick quiz to see where you stand:

Will Your Boundaries Be Respected?

T/F __ I resist setting boundaries because I fear backlashes.

T/F __ I don’t get mad easily, but when I do, watch out!

T/F __ I count on anger to put teeth in my boundaries.

T/F __ Somehow, my boundaries never seem to stick.

T/F __ I could maintain my boundaries easier if I didn’t feel guilty.

Did you answer true to any of these? They serve as valuable signals for common pitfalls that lead to circular efforts and frayed nerves.

1. Do not set boundaries out of anger.

If you are not ready to set a boundary calmly, you are not ready to set it at all. Avoid the temptation to work off of righteous indignation. No matter how you may rationalize an angry ultimatum, others will rightly feel blamed, and resent it. You may well encounter punishing behavior, feel inwardly guilty, and revert back to the same unsatisfying routines.

Instead, work through any current crisis as calmly as possible. Let others know you will be thinking about ways to avoid similar situations in the future, and start creating a game plan.

2. Accept full responsibility for your end.

You will find it easiest to set boundaries if you take full responsibility for any role you play in becoming overextended. Make it clear that you will be changing your time choices accordingly, and request others’ cooperation.

3. When tested, keep your cool.

Yes, you may encounter some grumbling or lack of follow-through in others. But by remaining reasonable yourself, you have not provided others with a rationale for acting out. It will be easier for you to stick to your guns, and allow them wrestle with their own resistance.

In other words, by acting fairly, you create your own comfort zone. The less reactive you are to others, the more quickly their testing behavior will subside.

If you find you slip back into old patterns, don’t become harsh with yourself. Simply pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and get back on track. With practice, setting boundaries calmly and effectively will become the new normal. Assimilating these lessons will help you distinguish between assertiveness and aggressiveness on a gut level. Then, you can identify overkill in others’ bluster, and refuse to be coerced into giving away your valuable time.

Now, what is your next move in using smart boundaries to safeguard your time?

Article by Paula Eder

Time management tips, at their best, revitalize your personal power – not later, but right now. Executive coach Marshall Goldsmith fully grasps this. In his most recent bestseller, “Mojo: How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back if You Lose It!” he describes this special quality as “Mojo”:

“Mojo is the moment when we do something that’s purposeful, powerful, and positive and the rest of the world recognizes it.”

If you want to build satisfaction and social capital, what time choices do you change? Goldsmith’s steps are remarkably straightforward. Furthermore, he offers a wealth of inspiring success stories to back up his theories. Here are 3 essential stratagies he recommends to prioritize the power of positive thinking as you plan your day:1. Thoroughly commit to your happiness.

Each day, rate each time choice you make on a 1 to 10 scale… Simply ask yourself the following 2 questions:What level of meaning or long-term benefit did you derive from this activity? What degree of short-term satisfaction or happiness did you experience? Notice how assigning a number to each activity helps you establish a hierarchy of priorities. In day to day life, it can be difficult to weigh options on short notice. Activities vary so greatly! Using numbers as the common denominator makes it easier to be decisive.

2. Persist as if the quality of your life fully depends upon it.

To achieve positive lasting change, ongoing follow-up is essential. Don’t be content with simple insights. Take the answers from the previous two questions and use them to reconstruct your time choices accordingly. Make this a daily commitment! Then you will experience first-hand how exercising power over your time choices directly increases your personal power.

3. Focus on explicitly positive communication.

Never assume that others can read your heart and your mind. Express your good intentions clearly and unambiguously so that they can’t possibly be misunderstood. Observe how sharing your appreciation and good will creates bridges between you and others! Verbalizing your satisfaction, gratitude and good wishes puts you “on record”, and this willingness to commit yourself helps strengthen relationships.

You can energize yourself and brighten your workplace dramatically by simply working these 3 tips. They require dedication, assertiveness, honesty and consistency. But your efforts will be rewarded when you experience that powerful upsurge in confidence and effectiveness. What better reward could you seek?

Now, how will you build on these ideas to make your life better today?

Article by Paula Eder

Robert Collier wrote these words: “Visualize this thing you want. See it, feel it, believe in it. Make your mental blueprint and begin.”

Time management tips and money management strategies work as a team. As you explore the parallels, your insights will generate new solutions to old problems. You can reach your goals much more effectively by utilizing the questions below. So take a few minutes now to explore your very personal relationship to time and to money,

Jot down quick answers for each topic to build an overview of your progress, your challenges, and your potential:

Time Management Questions:

1. What do I always get done?

2. Where does time get away from me?

3. What interferes with my completing certain tasks?

4. How much more time during the week do I need to handle essentials?

5. What openings in my schedule can I create to enhance my progress?

Money Management Questions:

1. What expenses do I always meet?

2. Which purchases place a strain on my budget?

3. What do I do without, and how do I feel about it?

4. How much more money do I need every week to cover high priority expenses?

5. Where can I economize to set aside money?

Use Journals to Build Your Plans

Your initial responses tell you a lot. And documenting how you use your time and money makes things crystal clear. Experiment with keeping track of your time and money choices in separate journals for 2 weeks. Simply focus on creating an accurate overview of your current patterns. Don’t try to make changes at this point!

Next, review the answers to your time management and money management questions. Your answers to these questions create a clear picture of your patterns. What similarities can you trace between your time choices and your money choices? What are the differences?

Now call in your imagination. Use what you learn to create a powerful set of images to inspire you. What exactly do you want to do with the time and money you access? Clarifying your motivation will help you develop new systems and stick with them.

Strategize for success by starting small. Let each success serve as a stepping stone for your next move forward. If you can build incentive by linking a new time choice with a new money choice, that is ideal! For example, if you want to pay for online training to advance professionally, and also need to set aside time to learn the material, try to work these goals in tandem. By paying for the course in installments, it clears the path for learning.

One of the most important things to keep in mind is to bring complete compassion to your explorations. First of all, this enriches each moment, and removes harmful distortions. It also helps you look deeply at patterns to obtain vital insights. Change only occurs then you relate to yourself with a friendly, non-judgmental attitude. So if you find this difficult, make the cultivation of compassion one of the first things you do with extra time! Everything else will evolve more smoothly as you create a safe space for exploration and assessment.

So, what is your next step to making more effective choices with your money and your time?

Article by Kanaga Siva

Time wasted is Life wasted. Once wasted, time can never be regained. You cannot speed it or slow it down to suit you needs. Hence implementation of Time Management Strategies is necessary to grow and achieve the full potential of your Home Based Business. How best you organize your time in your daily lives will make all the difference between success and failure or even attaining your personal goals.

“Time is the scarcest resource of the manager; if it is not managed, nothing else can be managed.”- Peter F. Drucker

How best can you organize and manage your time?

Good time management gives us the opportunity to balance our work with the various demands of our personal life. Unless these are balanced well, life can be frustrating and both work and leisure are bound to suffer.

It is wise to plan your time by scheduling your work on a monthly, weekly and daily basis. In this manner you can plan your work schedule well in advance. While planning your work schedule you will have to prioritize your work. If you don’t, you can fall into the dangerous habit of doing the easy work and procrastinating over the difficult ones, which are quite often the most important ones. The consequences of procrastination can be very disastrous to your home based business. Hence the necessicity for time management. Whenever you prioritize your work, you should fit your priority work into your best productivity time.

It is a known fact that all of us have certain times of the day when we are at our best, feel happy, creative and our energy levels are at their peak. This will naturally be our most productive period and this time should be allotted for the most difficult tasks and high priority jobs. The rest of the time could be utilized for simple and routine tasks you have to do. This is good time management.

Interruptions such as telephone calls from friends and direct interruptions by family members at home can be a nuisance and this should be discouraged. All external interruptions can be discouraged by being politely assertive. Family members can be discouraged by placing a sign on your door, not to interrupt you.

Another great way to manage your time is to clean up your working area on a regular basis. In this manner all unwanted papers could be destroyed, leaving behind only what is necessary while ensuring that important documents need not go astray or misplaced. Very often much valuable time is wasted searching for documents, thereby causing much frustration and stress. This is bad time management causing much frustration, stress and counter productive.

Variety is the spice of life. A monotonous schedule of work, day after day can be boring. Always plan your daily work schedule in a manner that will add variety, thereby creating a mood and desire to continue your work with enthusiasm.

Time management for a Home-Based Business entrepreneur is much easier today if you can take advantage of the tools that are available such as the Fax machine, Computer, E-mail, Autoresponder and the Telephone. Making the best use of these tools is the wisest way to manage your time and increase your productivity.

Successful implementation of the above Time Management Tips and Strategies will lay the foundation for increased productivity, reliability and success of your home based business.

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